


Even In The Present (I Am Living In The Past)

by cuupid



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Character Study, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Muslim Sam Wilson, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Religion as a factor of love and healing, Tenderness, don't ask about Steve he's in a retirement home or something idk, for canon is but silly putty to a writer like me, more mcu-adjacent than actually mcu, natasha is alive, vaguely canon compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-20
Updated: 2019-09-20
Packaged: 2020-10-24 15:37:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20708423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cuupid/pseuds/cuupid
Summary: Sometimes Sam still questions everything about his ability to shoulder the 80-year legacy he now bears. His history, and the history of his loss, sticks with him and even in healing he doubts whether or not he is able to fulfil his purpose, and whether he may find lasting peace and happiness.Told in fluid-fragments, the story moves between his therapy sessions after his return from active duty and the post-Endgame present.





	Even In The Present (I Am Living In The Past)

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, lovelies! This is my first Bang and it really has been a wonderful experience. 
> 
> Title taken from [Time Machine](https://nathanielorion.tumblr.com/post/176002606203/time-machine) by [@nathanielorion](http://tumblr.nathanielorion.com). I'm in love with the beautiful piece of art [@tazatouille](http://tumblr.tazatouille.com) created for this fic— they're incredibly talented and you should definitely give them a lot of love! 
> 
> I am nothing if not my own biggest fan and put together [this playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4RM07giZGhy8XRv4FZj3oW) that is half songs I listened to while writing and half songs that fit the theme and feel of this story. 
> 
> It's exactly two months to the day since I started this and I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I've enjoyed writing it!
> 
> warning: mention of suicide in the first therapy session

**i. 01 August 2012, 13.23 pm**

_It may be that you will destroy yourself with grief. — 26:3 _

"Do you ever think about suicide, Samuel?" Dr Reichz asked. 

"Sam," he corrected without thinking, without effort. 

He had been seeing Dr Reichz for a month— month and a week, he recounted and rethought. He had been _ Samuel _ and _ Mr Wilson _for one month and one week and he was too exhausted to be sick of it. 

Dr Reichz stayed silent. Her eyes, darker even than his own, scanned the files laying open on her desk. 

Shaking her head slightly, the ghost of a _ tsk _left unsaid sitting on her words, she repeated the question and Sam tapped a finger against the arm of the chair. An itch made its way up his neck, burned behind his ears. "I just said I get tired, doc. One thing and the other… not exactly the same." He almost forced out a laugh. Almost. He knew how it would sound and he couldn't bare to birth such a broken, strangled thing. 

"It's not a far stretch." She quieted down and, settling a heavy gaze on Sam, waited. 

A game, one that Sam should have been used to. He held back a sigh, cut a quick glance to the clock hanging over the door.

There was no way in Hell (_ Jahanam _the voice that sounded painfully like him at age nine, like his father, like his very first Islamic guidance teacher, hissed through his mind at the image of writhing flames, devouring lovers whole, and a shiver dug its way up his spine) that Dr Reichz would let the next forty minutes pass in silence, in stilted conversation winding around topics of any relevance. 

No way in Hell, as much as Sam would have preferred it that way. 

"— post-traumatic stress disorder—" Dr Reichz was speaking, Sam wasn't listening. The words he caught sliced right through him, a sharpened blade he thought he should be used to. Because that's who he was now: a veteran; a suffering veteran who had to see a therapist and answer questions about whether he thought about ending his own life. That was who he didn't want to be. 

Ending his own life_ . _Sam could have scoffed if it wouldn't have felt like an act. As if he wanted to spend the days until the Day of Judgement in a state of limbo, a wandering aching citizen of no home and no land. 

Dr Reichz caught his eye, repeated the earlier question. 

He cleared his throat, roughly. "Sometimes." And that was all his mouth allowed. The rest of the words burrowed deep into the hollow of his throat and refused exit. 

_ Sometimes. _Because there were days when his body was just a burden and every inhale hurt half as much as every exhale. Because there were nights where sleep coiled desperately around him and death flashed behind his eyes. Because who he didn't want to be was exactly who he was, even if he hated to admit it. 

Dr Reichz caught him in her sight. 

"Sometimes," he repeated, dryly. "Not… Not _ seriously, _just in passing. I don't like it, but I can't help it." 

Her nod was slow, understanding. Always understanding. He thought that he would never grow comfortable with her knowing him, seeing through defences as if never there in the first place.

The silence was too loud. "I feel so heavy, sometimes, doc. I think I'll have to die to ever feel light again."

Dr Reichz glanced down at her notes. "We—" 

"I know," he interjected. "'We have ways of dealing with these kinda thoughts.' I saw some things online, on some forums. Therapy was pretty high up on the list of things to do, and I'm already doing that," he ended with a dry laugh, chalk on paper, dry, and just as humourless.

Her stare was level, steady, free of judgement; the kind of look he absolutely did not want settled on him. Not after what he had done, what he had failed to do. 

He thought of wings on fire and silent screams reaching through air to tangle around his throat— He forced a cough. 

"Can we not talk about this today?" 

"We can't run away from every single thing we find uncomfortable. Healing comes in the talking and resolving."

"I know, I know," Sam said. He dropped his head against the back of the chair, stopped the groan from escaping only moments before it was out of his mouth. "But not today."

A moment of pause. "Okay," Dr Reichz allowed. "Last session you seemed… hesitant to talk about your mother. Tell me, how is Darlene?" 

"She calls and I don't always answer." He ran a hand over his eyes. They burned from his exhaustion. "I love my momma, Dr Reichz, I _ really _ do, there's nobody in this world I love more than I love her. I know she loves me too, but it gets… it gets…" 

"Overwhelming?" 

"Yeah. Overwhelming." He took another look at the clock. Willed it to move faster, to eat up the last few minutes and cue his leave. Dr Reichz didn't look away from him, the bore of her eyes laser-sharp and focused, meeting Sam's own as he snapped his head back to take her in once again. "She sent me a book of poems, as an Eid gift. I haven't read it yet. She… she tells me she loves me but sometimes it feels like she can't even bare to look at me."

"How does that make you feel?" 

Sam shrugged. "Don't know… Sometimes I can't even bare to look at me."

_ It isn't your fault _ and _ there's nothing you could have done differently _ and _ you can stop blaming yourself now _sat heavy in the room. A presence of their own; living, breathing in all the oxygen, taking up every inch of free space. 

He wanted to whisper for her to stay quiet, to not utter another word. But he was no mutant, and he did not have the powers of telepathy or persuasion that he wished he had. 

The clock struck the hour and Sam hurried to grab and slip into his jacket, rushed his goodbyes and promises of preparing for their next session. 

Halfway out the door Dr Reichz mentioned, as she often mentioned, that he should pay a visit to the VA. And Sam promised, as he always promised, that he would do that soon. 

**————————**

**2024**

_ You've discovered something you don't even have a name for. — Richard Siken _

His earpiece crackles loudly in his ear. 

It's all static and Sam can't quite hear Bucky grumbling about sitting in the cold anymore, shifting mildly between swearing the Avengers and complaining about freezing his ass off for the last hour. 

Sam adjusts the settings on the earpiece and, despite the want not to, tunes back in to the half-hearted, majorly one-sided conversation. "—send out somebody who can't even feel this cold shit." So they are at the _ freezing his ass off _ part. Again. "Like, whatshisname with the claws and the growling and the emptying out the fridge every time he decides he's a part of the team. Can't even show me common decency— Mister, I _ died _ for your freedom. _ Twice. _Put me back out in the cold. No fucking respect anymore," he ends with a miserable grumble and, for a blessed moment, falls quiet. 

Sam shifts in position. His back and thighs hurt from crouching in almost the same position for so long. "Wolverine's not an Avenger, Bucky. Not really." He breathes out a chuckle, his breath lingering in front of his face. 

An answering grunt. "Could've fooled me."

It was true what Hydra said about themselves; they could never be completely eradicated, and for every secret sector of the organisation the Avengers toppled another seemed to spring up in a few months, more daring, more calculated, more dangerously powerful. 

Maria Hill has endless sources, endless information at her fingertips, and she had gotten ahold of news of Hydra building a network of bases spanning the globe. 

Natasha, Scott and Hope had been sent to Moldova, Wanda and Bruce to some dusty town in Australia and Sam, Bucky, Clint and Maria made for the outskirts of some Canadian town far before the sun had risen over New York City. 

So far, and so removed from the city, most of the movement touching the distance has been a skittering animal. Not even a rumble of a truck, an old car, disturbs the horizon. 

The operation screams of being a dead end. 

Sam sighs. The nights out here are too cold and too dark, surveillance as impossible as staring at a brick wall in a room without lights or windows. The chill begins to slip through the cracks of his uniform, bites at his skin, and he knows that if nothing happens soon the mission would have to be abandoned. 

"Hey, Sammy boy, you still here?" 

Sam works his jaw, stiff from keeping near silent these last few minutes. "Sammy boy. That's a new one." His laugh is a low huff of breath at the name, gentle and unfamiliar thing it is. "Yeah, I'm still here. You missing me or something?" 

"Or something." Bucky stifles a yawn. His voice is rough, and Sam wonders how much sleep he's been getting. Wonders if he's been getting any sleep at all. "Glamorous job we've got ourselves here."

He smothers his own yawn into the back of his hand. "Pretty glamorous," Sam agrees, nodding even though he's sure Bucky can't see him. _ You're done complaining, gramps? _he thinks of pressing, but shakes away the jab for another time. "What are our chances of this being just another dead-end?"

"With our track record? I'd say, _ pretty high _."

"Hey, uh, Cap?" Clint comes over their comms, voice disrupted by static. "Don't mean to interrupt this titillating conversation—" 

"I don't think you're using that word right," Bucky interrupts, and Sam masked his laugh with an exaggerated fake cough. 

He could all but hear Clint rolling his eyes. "Whatever. I'm seeing three trucks large enough to carry Hulk and four of Hulk's friends. We've got company."

"Looks like Hydra?" 

Clint, stationed further up the mountain pass, has a clearer view of the road than either Sam or Bucky. 

The cold all but seeps into Sam's bones, coating his suit in a layer of ice and water it fights to squirm through the material and cling to his skin. Hefting the shield over his head, Sam stretches and pulls at the stubborn knots in his back and shoulders. 

Clint hurries, "Yeah. Probably. Actually, definitely."

Sam allows a short laugh. He sees the first of the trucks turning the corner. He notices first that they're much larger than Clint described, second that they're not as armed as they could be. "Move in on my count," he says, slipping into being Captain America as easily as if he was born into the role. 

And this shield. It feels right, strapped to his side or thrown across a battlefield, heavy in his hand or resting against his leg after a long fight. There is no name for it, except for that he knows he is walking a path written for him years before he was born. 

Doubts, so frequent in the earliest days, plague him less and less, and that pang of sadness every time he wears the costumes that has been passed down to him, every time he lifts a shield that used to belong to somebody else, ebbs faster than it used to. Sam doesn't believe in destiny, but he knows that greatness is predetermined and he no longer ignores the whispering of _ this is yours because you deserve it and Allah wants it for you _that swells joyfully in his chest whenever he feels most uncertain. 

"Barnes, are you in position?" he questions, swiftly pulling up a small map. 

"Finally get to move out of this fucking cold," Bucky says, loud and a song of laughter in his voice Sam hasn't heard in many months. "I got your back, Cap."

"And I've got yours," Sam returns. The truck ambles closer and he can almost see Clint itching, hand on the bowstring. "Hawkeye, now."

He doesn't see the arrow Clint shoots, but the ensuing explosion as it hits the side of a large black truck is hard to miss. 

Sleek wings unfold from behind him, smooth as the day they were designed. And, if the shield feels like fulfilling a legacy, his wings feel like home. "Move in, move in, move in," he barks into his comm, directing Bucky and about twenty operatives assigned to assist on this mission. 

Dozens of men, dressed in heavy radiation suits and screaming loudly at each other to protect the other two trucks and get them past, file out of the leading heavy vehicle. Weapons poised, they shoot without rhyme or reason.

Cold air dances around him, away from him as he slices swiftly from sharp hill to the middle of a battlefield.

It is something he often forgets, the rush of being in the middle of a fight. The adrenaline that races through his body, chases away any fear that might linger, lifts the shield and carries him through a wall of advancing Hydra agents. 

Gunfire rains around him in a steady, streaming curtain. Gunfire and arrows, and Sam knows that he is protected. 

He punches his way to the heart of the operation, moves fluidly away from the men Bucky and Clint have taken care of and nearer to the center of command. 

It takes less than an hour, shorter than Sam had expected, to have the agents not being escorted to Avengers headquarters handcuffed and on their knees, Maria Hill standing over them with her trademark scowl. 

"Good work," she spares a glance Sam's way and offers. It is, quite possibly, the highest form of praise Maria is willing to offer. 

Sam grins. "I have a good team."

"Still." Maria allows a small shrug, a smaller smile. "Modesty doesn't look as good on you as you think, Cap," she says, easily, as if they aren't in the middle of a blood and body-covered battlefield. Light flickers behind her eyes, and that ease shifts away as quickly as it came. Eyes return to the datapad that seems almost a permanent attachment, flicking hurriedly down the screen, she speaks: "HQ's been picking up strange readings along the Atlantic for weeks now. Intel indicates Hydra's cooking up something nasty along Atlantean borders; mining for oil or searching for the Orichalcum. We can't be sure."

"The Orichalcum…" Sam rubs at his chin, distractedly. His brow pulls into a frown. "That's just Plato, a myth."

Maria cocks an eyebrow. "God of thunder, a seventy year old assassin, witches and wizards, literal mermaids… Everything's a myth, at first. Thought you, of all people, would know that."

"I thought you, of all people, were more of a realist," Sam says, chuckling dryly. "Does Namor know about this?" 

"He's surface-side. Diplomats," Maria scoffs, not finishing her thought and moving on. "We'll worry about getting in touch with him. You worry about Hydra. And _ then, _you can rest."

"Scout's honour?" Sam asks, teasing the Director as very few can, and still live. 

"I never was a Scout, and you know if I have to call in Spider-Man for every mission the Avengers will have a lot more enemies than they already do." Maria hooks a thumb into her belt, almost absently. A twitch in the corner of her mouth gives away the smile that threatens to grow. Or, Sam thinks, maybe _ that _is the smile. "So, not a Scout's honour, but a Maria Hill Promise, okay? For whatever it's worth."

Out of everyone that Sam has had the privilege of working with, he admires Maria the most. Supervillainy doesn't sleep, but her promise is worth more than its weight.

She offers a last nod to Sam. Footsteps light, assured, she walks through rubble and turns up ground without much of a second glance to where she places her feet. Work calls her, and so does it call Sam and the rest of his thrown-together team.

Turning in slow circles, Sam surveys the unfolding scene. He hides a yawn in the curl of his fist; it would do no good for the morale of anyone watching to see Captain America tired. But tired he is and he wishes, around a muted chuckle, that he could join Clint in leaning against one of the regulation S.H.I.E.L.D four-by-fours and catching a doss.

A slight crackle sounds in his ear. Bucky, finally free from his own post-mission requirements, launches instantly into conversation in Sam's ear. "I almost lost my favourite ass cheek to this goddamn cold and I still have to tell some rookie agent every detail 'bout how I managed not to kill you during this mess of a gunfight. I'm the greatest sniper to ever have sniped, that's how."

"Modesty," Sam jokes lightly, feeling Maria lingering in his words like the after-scent of expensive perfume. 

"Look at us, we're still alive." A resounding scoff, gruff as everything that is Bucky. 

That they are. His body aches terribly— enough for him to know it will hurt for a few more days to come— but they are alive and well and laughing. God and tiny miracles, right? 

"Thanks for that, soldier," Sam says into the comm. Trying and failing to stop himself, his smile inks into his words. 

Bucky makes his way down from the cliff on which he has spent the day, crouched and cramped. Jogging and catching himself on the ice-slick surface, he meets Sam's steady eyes across the shortening distance and raises a hand in mock salute.

As far away as he is, Sam can't see the grin alighting his face. The sound of it, however, is crystal in his voice. "Said I'll have your back," Bucky smirks, pulling his face into something that, if Clint were awake to see, would be marked as _ unbecoming _. "How about a drink to celebrate? On me, of course."

A drink? Smile falling slightly, he shakes his head. "Raincheck? There's some shit going down in Atlantis."

"Can't they call Spider-Man? Some spiders can swim, right?" Bucky jumps the last few metres and lands in front of Sam, barely even winded. "I'm pretty sure some spiders can swim."

"Come on, Mr Big Time Avenger." Sam nudges. "Some time underwater could be good for you. Broaden your horizons, get you a taste of some culture."

Bucky grunts. He rolls his eyes and hooks his thumbs into some crevice of his uniform, all in one fluid motion. "Should've just stayed in Wakanda; T'challa never treated me like this."

Silently, Sam raises an eyebrow.

After escaping the Raft, Sam and Steve were at a loss more often than they liked to admit, even to each other. It was often that Wakanda was the only place open to them, the only place where they were welcomed guests and not fugitives or painfully tolerated outsiders. 

When Bucky was still in cryo, Steve would excuse himself to spend long hours of his day idling beside him, reading or pacing or remembering a long ago past; when Bucky was out of cryo, and their visits became more and more frequently for pleasure than necessity, Steve would spend those same hours happily whiling away in the company of his oldest friend. 

And Sam— Sam had long since turned acquaintances into beloved companions. He sat down to lunches with Okoye and Nakia and listened, intently, to them gift him with tidbits of castle gossip. 

For a time, a shorter time than either would have liked, Sam could be found arm-in-arm with the prince himself, each enjoying the company of a similar soul as, leaning into each other, they strolled the grounds and inched through the market. Often, these more public dates of theirs were disrupted by Shuri, always eager to show Sam a new embarrassing video of T'challa or to orate a story of just how exactly she had tortured Bucky that week.

Sam knew all about Wakanda. His raised eyebrow was pointed and not uncalled for. 

"Okay, fine," Bucky groaned, drawing out the vowels in a show of quite excellent dramatics, "but we're not talking about Shuri right now. That kid… Sam, that kid is ruthless." 

At the corner of his eye, he sees a short-haired agent try to nudge Clint awake and away from the car door.

New to the job, obviously.

Shifting his weight from one foot to the next, Sam is slow in gliding his gaze back to Bucky. "Whatever you say," he murmurs. 

Hair falling into paint-smeared eyes and skin cracking from the cold, a grin inching across raw and bitten lips, Bucky dips his head forward. "I can forget about that drink, if you take me to dinner in Atlantis. I hear their cuisine is something else."

"Where did you hear that?" laughing, Sam asks. _ It's still a mission; _ he doesn't say. _ No; _he definitely doesn't say. 

Bucky bumps his shoulder against Sam's, light enough to hardly even push or unbalance. The tactical combat boots he wears give him an inch of extra height; a difference in which he happily relishes, looking down at Sam and casting a tilting, gentle grin over him whenever the opportunity arises. "I have my connections," he answers, opaque as always.

They fall into step with each other, as easily as if practiced. 

Sometimes the shield sits too heavy on his shoulders, the weight of all that Steve was and all that he could have been pressing down and threatening to ground him into the very earth he stands upon. The world sits on his back, like Atlas in so many senses, exhausted and fighting not to bend so far he breaks. 

But often, an agent will nod at him in passing or a little kid with gaps in their teeth and little braids in their hair will stare at him in awe, at _ Captain America, _the only one they've ever known, and the weight does not sit so heavy. Or Bucky will lean in close, rest a hand on a bent elbow and, with that glitter in his eye and a crooked grin, say "How ya doing Cap?" looking at him as if he has never known anything other than this Sam Wilson-shaped Captain America, and that heaviness just strains where it could completely destroy. 

"I don't think I trust your connections," Sam presses, biting back a smile. 

**————————**

**ii. 16 August 2012, 12.42**

_ My Lord! Truly I am in need of whatever good that you bestow on me. — 28:24 _

"Is that the book your mother sent you?" Dr Reichz asked. 

The pages were worn from where countless hands had paged through it; were warm from where Sam's fingers had run, restless and nudging the line of care, since it had been placed in his hands. He shook his head. "No, it's, uh." His chuckle was strained. "It's Ri— Ri's. It was Ri's. I had lunch with his sister. She wanted to see me, she said she wanted me to have some of his stuff."

Pencil scratched against paper, wove its way between the rattling of the window and under the quiet. "How does it make you feel, having Riley's things in your possession?"

"I can't stop touching it, haven't even set it down since she gave me," Sam said, eyes trained on the floor. He blinked rapidly away a thought and, gently, slipped the book back into his bag. It burned to touch, weighed much too heavy in his hands, and yet with it away his hands were untethered things, desperate for the anchor. "It didn't feel real— It _ doesn't _ feel real," he whispered, "holding something that was his… _ before… _It's like trespassing; seeing something I'm not supposed to see, because I wasn't given his permission to see it."

He pulled the book from his bag again, he couldn't help himself. His fingers moved of their own accord: touched the letters a nineteen-year old Riley had scrawled across the front page, pressed into the small hole burnt from fallen cigarette ash. 

An image of Riley, a cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth, unruly and free in a way Sam would never see, flashed through his mind. Breath caught in his throat. Choked him. 

Fingertips pressed gently into the round of his shoulder. Dr Reichz's voice reached him as if from far away. "Breathe, Sam, breathe," she said. She pressed a glass of water into his hands and he waved it away, barely having to think of it. "Oh. I forgot. Fasting."

"Yeah." And he coughed a strangled laugh. He pushed the pads of his fingers against his closed eyes, took in a deep breath, another. "I'm fine, doc. Sometimes, I think of all these things I'll miss— I don't think I can do this anymore."

"I'm only so qualified to help you… It might do you good to be around people with shared lived experiences."

"The VA?" 

Dr Reichz nodded. "Are you okay?" She waited for his answering nod, and then pushed ahead, "Have you been to visit the gravesite?" 

Sam flinched. In that moment he hated Dr Reichz, despised her for the question she had posed and the blunt way in which she had posed it. Then it passed. He slumped forward. "No. Not yet." His sigh was loud in the space between them. "I thought I should. It's… This… We're… Ramadaan is… Everything's different during this month. And it's different to pray by his grave than to pray at home."

"It could be good for you, seeing him. How about an exercise?" 

Sam groaned. 

"Starting today, I want you to write down everything you wish you could have told Riley, alright, and when you go to his grave I want you to talk to him and tell him all of it," Dr Reichz said, a gentle smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. 

The things he had wanted to say to Riley had collected and collected, they reached so high they could topple. Could he write them all, bare his heart to himself and to the world? 

His stomach turned, and Sam swallowed. "No promises, but I can try."

Dr Reichz checked her wristwatch. "That's all I want. And Sam, before you go, try and see your family for Eid this weekend. I know you miss them."

"I'll… I'll have to see…" he murmured, uncertain. It sat like a promise, and he felt like he'd made more than what he was comfortable with. 

**——————**

**2024**

_ I die of love for him, perfect in every way, / Lost in the strains of wafting music. / My eyes are fixed upon his beautiful body / And I do not wonder at his beauty. — Abu Nuwas _

In the interest of the Avengers, of saving lives and preserving peace, Sam has seen more of the world than he ever dreamed. 

He has spent a weekend on Mars trying to diffuse tensions between minor and major monarchies. He groans to remember the long week into which it turned; to remember the long quiet tribe, separated from the larger population for many years, taking the arrival of _ Earth's Falcon _ as a sign of promise and deciding Sam would be better a husband to their Queen than as an Avenger. 

He fought in the heart of a dying volcano, flew over towering mountains of gold, travelled through portals to find himself on the other side of the galaxy.

He has died more times than he can count and seen the afterlife in many of its ever-shifting forms. 

But he has never been under the ocean. Not like this. 

The submarine is a gift from T'challa, one he would prefer not returned, though that's exactly what Sam will do once the mission is over. It isn't wise, accepting presents from ex-lovers, no matter how beautiful the presents; no matter how beautiful, how kind, the ex-lover. 

And this sub— Sam crosses his arms on one of the golden rods that follow the gentle curve of the viewing room's glass wall, drops a small sigh that echoes the slightest bit around him— is absolutely beautiful. 

Seamless glass, spotless, fish swim by so close their fins brush against the window. "Beautiful," a whisper, equal parts shock and breathless awe, he tilts back at a shark that nears and veers away only at the last moment.

He sees God in everything. Here, even moreso. 

"Not bad," Kate Bishop says, thudding in and sprawling on one of a few wicker chairs placed around the deck. All the grace of Clint, himself, and the bruises and bandages to show for it. "A girl could get used to this kind of leisure."

"It's not all leisure, and I don't approve of you being on this mission." 

He follows a school of tiny yellow fish. Out of the corner of his eye, Sam catches the barest glimpse of Kate cleaning her fingernails with the tip of an arrow. Despite himself, he smiles. 

"Yet," she says, voice a murmured drawl, "here I am, anyway."

Yet, here she is anyway. Good enough to stand her own on the team, too, Sam knows. 

Resigned, he sighs. "Where's America? I could'a sworn you two were joined at the hip."

Kate pauses from battling with what seems a particularly stubborn patch of dirt and throws Sam an eye roll, a grin. "She's angry and sea-sick, and angry from being sea-sick. She's sitting it out in the spa with Bucky. They're 'bonding.'"

"Let me guess." Sam grimaces. The brightness of the light inside the deck takes a moment to blink away after the growing darkness of the ocean. Turned away from it now, he crosses his legs at the ankle, rests his arms on the railing, and finds a spot just beyond Kate's head to help his eyes readjust. "A lot of grunting and 'never should have let myself be talked into this stupid mission' while cursing and downing whole pots of coffee?" 

"Pretty much." She raises an eyebrow. Doesn't put a voice to the question playing clearly across her face as she swaps out the used arrow for a fresh one. 

"I know Bucky." Sam shrugs. "And I know enough about Miss Chavez, too. I'm Captain America, remember, I know everything."

Kate grins, crooked and mischievous. "We sure know how to pick 'em, don't we, sir?" 

He slips into an easy smile. It isn't a feeling he's accustomed to, being unsure of what to say, usually words spring from him as if he were meant to say them. 

_ I didn't pick him, I was stuck with him, _sounds too harsh to even whisper while his friend is unnerved, likely keeled over a bucket in another part of the ship. 

He stores it away, keeps it safe for another time. 

Heavy, known, footsteps thud around the corner. Sam's eyes widen, almost imperceptibly, and he pushes himself away from the railing before he can think. That trademark silent stalk of his gone, a clear, cutting, indication of his unsteadiness. 

"Bruce got us on this thing to help the nausea pass," Bucky groans, in lieu of a greeting, as he slowly storms his way into the room. "I said, I've only wanted to see underwater since I was four and now I've gotta be sicker than an ape with a dic—" 

"Kate," Sam warns, sliding a glare to the younger Hawkeye.

"Dairy allergy." He throws his hands up in feigned innocence. "I meant dairy allergy. But, c'mon, you're Barton's kid," Bucky, mirth creeping back into his voice as he stops to ruffle Kate's hair, says, "you've heard worse."

Skillful and quick, Kate swats Bucky's hand to the side. "Not his kid. Have heard worse, have said worse, you're both just really old."

"Kids these days. No respect." Shaking his head, Sam forces his mouth to draw into a frown. 

Kate's a sweet kid, and though Clint's not so bad himself, you have to be a special kind of annoying to be close friends with him. Everybody knows that. Clint and Kate declare it, loud and strangely proud, whenever the opportunity may arise. 

Bucky reaches out to ruffle her hair again, this time deliberately into an even worse tangle of knots. As swift as earlier, Kate jumps away from the touch. Her glare washes over Bucky, over Sam, and she excuses herself to see whether America has returned to herself as quickly as Bucky. 

A quiet falls between the two men. Comfortable and gentle; welcoming, and like the embrace of a familiar touch. 

Exhaustion weighs heavily in Bucky's eyes, a dark paint colouring his skin in sallow purple. He bows in on himself, slightly; enough so to fly, unnoticed, over the heads of anybody else. But Sam isn't anybody else. 

Without a word, he wraps an arm around Bucky and, shouldering his weight, leads them to the railing still warm from where Sam had leaned on it, the glass still fogged from his breath. 

A warm presence, the calm of hair tickling his cheek, the comfort of another body pressed against his; all things forced to the back of his mind. His love has been ripped from his chest too soon, has been consumed and disregarded at the earliest convenience, and he has spent months swallowing the parts of him that ache, that crave, that yearn to love again. But sometimes—

Bucky presses a huff of a laugh into Sam's shoulder then. And Sam loses his train of thought. And Sam stays close, doesn't move away, much as he knows he should. 

"You smell good," Bucky murmurs, voice muffled in the curve of Sam's shoulder. 

And, oh, the moment is tender. 

He sees God in everything; utmost beauty and utmost love and fragile perfection woven into the most cracking of surfaces by Allah's own hand. Looking down at Bucky, soft light from the room and dark blue of the ocean bouncing off his face and kissing upon his small smile, Sam swallows. 

When They said "Paradise will be brought near to the righteous, not far" is this what They meant? The companionship of this man, is this what They meant? 

Bucky bumps lightly against Sam's chest. 

In inching increments, colour returns to his stubbled face and to the steel grey of his eyes. Flecks of vivid blue and muted green colour the grey. Sam never noticed that before, it quirks his lips into a smile. 

Those eyes, now focused, now crinkling at the corners from his growing smile, seek Sam's gaze. Spark as if, in finding what they had sought, are deeply satisfied. 

"What?" Sam asks. 

A beat passes. A stray fish glides past. 

"Nothing," Bucky sing-songs a reply. 

He presses further into Sam's side and Sam blurts out the first thing that comes to mind. "You're not contagious, are you?" 

The moment he says it, he regrets it. Heat travels up his neck, burns at his ears and the base of his cheeks. 

If he could sink into himself, he would. 

He has not prayed for a hole to open up and swallow him completely and utterly since he was sixteen and sneezed all over April Cardin's new church dress after she smiled and said she liked his haircut. 

Awkwardly, pulling the slightest bit away from Bucky, Sam coughs into his closed fist. 

Brow furrowed, Bucky answers slowly, "No… I'm not contagious…" 

"Oh. Good. That's good."

Running footsteps echo outside the room. Kate skids around the corner and pulls herself to a stop, just managing to dig her nails into the doorframe and keep herself from tripping over her own feet, from falling over the few steps. "Atlantean vessels!" she all but breathlessly calls. "Namor— Cap, they're calling for you out front! They want you!" 

Sam darts his eyes to the ceiling. Sends a quick _ thank you _up to God for helping him in his hour of need. 

His hand lingers on the small of Bucky's back for just one indulgent moment, and then Sam is holstering the shield and leading the way to the front of the ship. 

He cracks his neck, strengthens his jaw, pushes the image of confusion clouding Bucky's gaze away for later, and prepares to welcome their Atlantean allies. 

***

Grace is much a part of Atlantean culture. Yet the hardness at the edge of a smile, the mistrust hidden behind a glint of a keen eye, is easy enough to spot once Sam starts to look. 

"Hydra?" Namor asks, pushing away from the conference table.

He crosses his arms over his chest and moves from chair to glass wall. Staring out at what he must know as well as Sam knows the New York City skyline, he taps a bare foot distractedly against a golden gleaming floor. 

"What could Hydra want with Atlantis? And how could they have gotten past my defenses?" 

"It seems to be a fairly small convoy," Natasha says, bringing up pages upon pages of stats and collected data. 

It's the first time Sam has seen her since they boarded the submarine. Holed up in her quarters or in one of the many state-of-the-art training rooms T'challa had built with Wakanda's Dora Milaje kept in mind, she has ghosted her way through each room and left almost no trace of her presence. Little more than a stain of blood or lipstick on a discarded tissue, a half-eaten plate of toast, a bite taken from a donut, a _ good morning :) _note stuck to the fridge; reminders of Natasha being here and alive, even if not by Sam's side. 

She won't talk about any of it. But Sam sees the coldness in her eyes when she trains, unforgiving and unrelenting, as if she deserves the bruised knuckles and split lips she manages each day; remembers the slip of the cool facade, the cry when she thought she would be killed in those final battles against Thanos, when she thought she would lose her best friends. 

She won't talk about it, but she needs to. Sam sees himself reflected in her clear blue eyes, and Sam knows that she needs to. For her own sake. 

Another time, Sam thinks. Another, better place. 

He stiffens his shoulders in that classic Captain America line, all strength and patriotism that would mean nothing to his family of Avengers and even less to the Atlanteans who do little to hide their disdain. 

Sam tunes back into the conversation as Namor turns from the window, sets his gaze somewhere between America and Kate. "I assume the children will not be participating?" Stated like a question, but certainly not meant as one. 

"Children—?" America splutters. Anger rising and colouring her cheeks. 

"They're a part of the team, Namor. I trust them," Sam says; trademark Captain America voice, trademark Captain America frown; trademark Captain America glare just for America and Kate, asking them to let their rage out on someone or something else. 

Sullenly, they oblige. Namor, too, the given seal of approval seemingly enough for him. 

Or, more likely, it was the fifty-yard glare that Bucky had trained on Namor from the beginning of the meeting— trademark Winter Soldier stare, trademark Winter Soldier scowl, trademark Winter Soldier blankness drawing his features into something just close enough to threatening to be given a second thought, a third, a fourth— that was enough for him. 

They leave in deceptively small pods, as soon as Namor grants them a royally sharp nod and turns away to talk plans over with his gathered guard. 

Natasha is quiet beside Sam, tapping a finger against her chin as she looks through pages of statistics she could probably recite from memory from all she has barely looked away from them. 

"How's Maria? How are you?" Sam almost asks, the words sitting just on the tip of his tongue. 

But he can't bring himself to talk. Air straining to choke, awkwardness heavy as it has never been.

Natasha looks out the large window, framing the ocean like a photograph and allowing for just the slightest glimpse of Atlantis in their periphery. Her gaze focuses beyond the parting kelp, beyond the rising sea walls Bucky manoeuvres the pod through, and Sam has the sinking thought that she wouldn't answer him anyway. 

"Hydra base pulling up in about one-thousand meters or so," Natasha says, first, pressing a complicated sequence of numbers and letters into the sleek dashboard. Curt, tired-eyed and harsh in a way Sam hasn't seen her in years. 

He recognizes it, all too well. He used to wear that same look, used to choke out that same voice; he sees it every day at the VA. 

"Looks like sand… and sand… and," Bucky glances around, taking a slow turn around a large pile of rocks, "yup, more sand."

"It's the sea, Barnes." Natasha rolls her eyes. "The ocean. It's pretty much all sand."

"We passed some coral beds back there," Sam adds.

"We did, didn't we." 

It's about the most Sam has heard her say in weeks, the realization pangs swift and deep. 

Her phone beeps, loud in the enclosure of the pod. Maria, from the faint light eking into her eyes, if not touching across her hard drawn features. "I- I'm taking this," Natasha says, gruff, marching to a corner of the small room. 

She should visit the VA. The offer stands for her as much as it did for Steve, as much as it does for any Avenger. And Sam has a feeling she would find welcome there; a sense of peace, if not a sense of home. Sometimes Dr Reichz's voice finds its way into his mind, and he hears her earnestly insisting that it would do Natasha some good. 

He bites back a shallow grin; it seems he turned out more like her than either of them would have thought, those first unsteady months. 

Natash strangles a laugh behind a cough and Sam allows her her privacy, it is the smallest gesture he can offer in cramped quarters. 

His gaze finds its own way to Bucky, as it seems to do more and more as the days pass; traces the lines of a jaw held taut in awed, careful concentration, of sturdy fingers leading them deeper into the ocean. The barest fingers of sickness linger at the dips between his eyes and at the corners of his mouth. Sam notices, thinks he could kick himself. 

What had happened to self-assured and confident? Where was that Captain America charm, usually easy as breathing, when it was really needed? 

_ Are you contagious? _He drops his eyes to the floor, can't help the embarrassed flush and horrified chuckle that finds its way into the air between them. 

Bucky cocks a questioning eyebrow. "What?" he asks, gruff; possibly too gruff to really be a murmur. 

"Nothing. Praying, because I don't know whose bright idea it was to let Bucky Barnes drive."

"I'm not driving, I'm steering." He shakes his head, pulls his mouth into an exaggeratedly disappointed frown.

His chair shivers underneath him with each turn Bucky takes, gentle and not even enough to rustle him, the pod made too well for that kind of disturbance. 

"And _ I'm _ praying."

Arms folded over the edge of the shield balancing in his lap, Sam leans forward. A smile threatens to chase away the irritation he has carefully schooled into his features. Though, recently, irritation doesn't come so easily where Bucky is concerned. 

Bucky points an artful vibranium finger out the window, at a touch of dark coral clumping together on a distant rock. "You should get something that colour."

Startling in a shade of deep red, standing out amongst yellows and golden-oranges, Sam could hardly bring himself to look away. "Why?" he asks, as simply as he is capable. It slips into the moment, the evening's earlier tenderness. 

A light blush touches the base of Bucky's cheeks, and Sam knows he isn't imagining it. "Just." He shrugs. "You'd look good in that. Can't exactly take you out for drinks and have you look ugly." 

He barks out a heavy laugh, a relieving, relaxing laugh. "I'm not the one with the five o' clock never-had-a-shower-in-my-life beard."

Bucky laughs then. A loud laugh that tries, for not even half a moment, to be an annoyed grumble. It tumbles out from him, lights his eyes and crinkles the skin at the corner of his mouth into delicate creases.

Captain America confidence be damned, his usual Sam Wilson confidence seems to slip through his fingers as if it were water and he a bowl made entirely of paper. 

It isn't something he's used to, being dazed and mesmerized and faltering in the presence of another. 

Even with Steve, even with Riley, it was always them tongue-tied around him; always them looking for the next word, failing and trying for the next moment to flirt and charm and woo and searching for a way to have that warm smile bestowed upon them. Always them stumbling, awkward. 

It can't be him. He has no idea what he'll do if it's him. 

He ducks his face, he knows he isn't hiding his smile well, and, at the round of the next corner, leans to the side and bumps a shoulder against Bucky's.

And Bucky chokes on his laugh, lets go of a chuckle at the end of a halting breath. 

"Calm down, gramps," Natasha says, pocketing her phone and falling back into her seat. "Did I miss a proposal, or a rejection?" 

Sam ignores the back-and-forth bickering that ensues and settles into the background noise that is their easy conversation.

Natasha spots the Hydra base in the distance and radios into the rest of the pods. With an ease that is almost second nature, Sam falls into preparing to lead their team as well as the other three following close behind. 

Captain America set in his shoulders, Captain America jut of his chin, Captain America standing him tall. He raises the shield to his side. 

Bucky places a hand on his shoulder before they can exit the pod. "Got your back, Sam. Cap. If you need me I'm there."

"I know. Got your back, too, Soldier." All Sam Wilson nod, all Sam Wilson spark, all Sam Wilson smile. 

**————————**

**iii. 30 August 2012, 00.07**

_ 'Oh, Allah, keep me alive as long as there is goodness in life for me and bring death to me when there is goodness in death for me.' — Prophet Muhammad (SAW) _

Dr Reichz tried to call. Three times, and each one more ignored than the last.

The sun rose on Riley's birthday and then it set, the weight of it a lead in the well of his stomach. He lit a candle in his kitchen and watched it burn, paid no attention to the slow descent of light and the ever-growing clasp of darkness. 

He hated himself for that he could not bring himself to move on. Three days of this kind of grief was as much as he was allowed, but more months had passed than he could bear and every time he thought he was healing he would stumble and fall into a pit of heavy suffering. 

He bent down to pray and he cried. He begged for release and he cried. He drank ice cold water and couldn't force himself to eat. He sang Happy Birthday and nobody heard. 

**————————**

**2024**

_ There / are moments / in moist love when heaven / is jealous of what / we on earth can do. — Hafiz _

Late afternoon sunlight streams through an open window, muted and falling across freshly swept floors. It should be raining. Outside the sky is grey, and it should be raining. 

Bucky balances on a shaky three-legged stool, trying to change a kitchen light bulb that's gone out for the second time that month. 

"Thanks for coming over," Sam says. He can hear the distractedness in his own voice. It drowns out the gratitude; he hates it, but it can't be helped. 

"Of course. You need light bulbs changed or groceries bought, I'm your guy." He shrugs, a bright grin rucking up one side of his face. "Guess you could say, I'm what some might call 'husband material.'"

Sam huffs a laugh. Rubbing at the bridge of his nose, he murmurs, "Is this a hint? Am I the future Mr Wilson-Barnes?"

"You could be," he breathes, squinting up at the ceiling. 

A picture of Riley sits on the mantel.

Dressed in a bronze frame, secondhand and faded and found hidden in the back of an old thrift store, it keeps safe its own space amongst the portraits of Sam, of a Wilson family he makes a point to see for more than reunions and jumah lunches. 

"Maybe I want to be." 

Riley, his bright eyes lined familiarly at the corners, his gap-toothed smile, looking out at Sam every day since Sam could bare to see him again, to have him live on the fringe of his life as he lived on the fringe of Sam's mind; and, for a while, when he couldn't even bare to do any of that. For a while when he was convincing himself that he could. 

"He woulda been thirty-five yesterday," he whispers, apropos of nothing. 

And Bucky. Sam exhales for how grateful he is of Bucky, for his single nod and understanding silence. 

His presence is warm. Beyond the now familiar sting that finds Sam most strongly at two different times each year, he drowns in the love he carries for Bucky; swims in his love for him. Body broken from battle and heart aching, love and love and love fills him thoroughly. 

Bucky hops down, landing with a thud and a smile, he flicks on the light switch and basks in the artificial light flooding the room. "Ta-dah!" he exclaims. 

Sam leans back in his armchair. It settles under his weight, worn and welcoming him into its hold like a home, like a long lost lover. "These are the superhero perks I'm always hearing about?" That same distraction in his voice. 

His eyes can't seem to stray from that photograph. It's gathering dust. It should have rained today and he can't stop thinking about it. Maybe if he focused on Bucky's face he could put his heart into making a joke. 

"Some of them." Bucky kicks the stool back against the counter. He hovers near the end of the empty sofa, taps vibranium fingers idly against his thigh. "You also get to buy me dinner, once you're all healed up."

"Dinner," Sam scoffs. "Always talking about dinner. I'm Captain America, you know. You should be making me dinner. Regularly."

"Which one of us is ninety-years old, huh? Don't make me give you the 'Respect Your Elders' speech. Again." 

It almost feels normal. 

His body is stiff from a week long fight in the Himalayas, his arm broken from a push down the side of a mountain, his leg done to match. 

He shifts from Avengers Tower to his modest home; from the bedroom in the back to the bedroom in the front to the bathroom to the lounge. 

He looks at the shield sitting in the corner of his room in a way he has tried not to look at it since he first wielded it, he looks at the picture of Riley, frozen in time as Sam ages and ages and ages. 

Sam rolls his eyes. It's forced, and Bucky winces even as he grins. He wonders how much of what they're doing is just tiptoeing around each other. "I'm pretty sure I'm older than you," he says, after a moment. "In all the years that matter."

"My years matter. And they make me older than you."

He cracks a slow grin. _ All the years that matter? _ He can't seem to think of a single one. But he knows that's just the irritation talking; he needs to get out of this house before he starts having lengthy conversations with Riley about the physics of love and new love lost again and again and again.

"I think sometimes," he murmurs, eyes stuck on a spot just above Riley's shoulder. "About Steve."

Bucky breathes out a laugh. "What, whether he lost _ just _ his common sense or _ just _ his brain cells in the snap?" 

It should have rained today, he thinks again, his mind is fogged up by meds and he keeps returning to that. Despite himself, Sam chuckles. It strains at him, like he sees it strains at Bucky. "Let's say he lost both and call it a draw." As best he can, he shrugs. 

The concoction of pain medication Bruce gave him finish seeping their way through his body. Bucky flickers at the corners of his vision, an apparition, his voice distorts and fades like the radio presenter on one of those broadcasts from the forties; from Bucky's time. Sam chuckles, his own private joke. 

"What's so funny?" 

"You."

Bucky is still standing and it swims through Sam's mind that he should offer him a seat. But he's never had to offer him a seat before. 

"Ha ha," comes the distant, deadpanned response. 

Sleep beckons to him, offers a reprieve from the throbbing headache finding a home in the back of his skull and the stiff ache of his broken bones. He fought it away for most of the afternoon but, now, he lets it take him. Restless and exhausted, he lets sleep have him. 

When he wakes, for a blearily passing moment hours later and just after eleven-thirty, he shrugs away the cable-knit blanket that Bucky had placed over him as he slept, gentle across his raw and hurting shoulders. 

Almost normal, he thinks, knowing he threw normal out the window the moment he strapped himself back into the wings, since before that. 

Tired, he slowly shakes his head. Laughs to himself in the growing gloom, broken only by a stray lamp left on in the corner. 

**————————**

**iv. 19 September 2012, 13.42**

_ Allah will create peace after hardship. — 65:7 _

The clock ticking in the back of the room weaved through sentences and the gaps between letters. 

"It's been a while," Sam noted, tracing the handle of a half-full teacup. It was black, no milk or sugar and stronger than he usually liked to drink. He sipped at it anyway. "You're looking good, doc."

"So are you." Dr Reichz glanced at her notes. "Tell me about this last month. What have you been up to?"

"I… " Sam trailed off. His voice followed his eyes out a large window overlooking the highway, the faint curve of the ocean in the distance. He cupped his chin, wasn't sure anything he had done was worth mentioning. "I saw my Aunt," he settled on, after a second passed, "She spent a week down here with me, for my birthday… It was better than I thought it would be. Easier."

Dr Reichz asked a question. 

A bird flew past the window, its wings beating furiously against the press of air, hitting against glass and frame, before carrying it over the rise of buildings, carrying it away and further away, and Sam was lost to what she had said.

She clicked her pen once; a habit Sam had noticed in his second month of sessions. "Sam?" she pressed, gently. 

"I'm back. I'm back," he murmured. Eyes focused back on the doctor, he said, "She didn't treat me like I was too fragile to be around, like I could break if she looked at me funny. I…" More birds outside the window, flying past in formation. "She took me to Ri's grave and held my hand the whole time. We read for him, a surah Yaaseen each. But Ri— Ri wasn't religious, at all." He chuckled, could feel the burning in his eyes again. 

"And how did that make you feel?" 

Sam barely had to think about it. Connected to the universe, to God, to himself; like the blurred away edges of himself had been smoothed out by a loving hand. 

He swallowed. His voice clear, he said, "Something I haven't felt in two years."

"How about another exercise?" Dr Reichz posed, her voice already fading away as his mind slipped back into absent thought. 

**————————**

**2024**

_ We are people who need love, because love is the soul's life, love is simply creation's greatest joy. —Hafiz _

He has a dark leather jacket— worn enough around the edges to show it wasn't bought off the rack that morning— thrown over a black turtleneck that clings ridiculously to the shape of his body. 

He washed his hair, Sam notices, trimmed and styled it too. 

Bucky looks good. Better than he should look for what is just dinner between friends, between co-workers. For what is certainly not a date. 

A bubble of relieve bursts in Sam's chest. He breathes out, and the exhale chases away the tension he has been holding since the night began. Since he hung up the phone on Kate and Clint and their one thousand and one questions, and stared at himself long enough in the mirror to imagine the paling of his skin and the reddening of his eyes. 

A dinner between friends, between co-workers. It wasn't serious. Not at all. 

Yet. He chased away the lingering sound of Steve laughingly saying it was just grape juice and he sipped on a glass of the non-alcoholic wine he saved for such an occasion, he fingered the sleeves of a dozen jackets and tried them each on about two times, he put Marvin Gaye on in the background and, alone in his home, didn't bother to hide the grin at the texts from Bucky coming in one after another. 

Not a date. Not even a little bit. 

In that moment, as if he can hear the starting and stopping of Sam's heartbeat and the run of his thoughts lassoing his breaths into order, Bucky looks up from his menu. His finger stops halfway down the page of beverages. His eyes find Sam's and he breaks out into a smile wider than Sam has ever seen. 

"Hey." Bucky stands to greet him. "You look…" He pauses. Runs his eyes over Sam and takes in the outfit somewhat reminiscent of a three-piece suit: pale yellow jacket, black shirt buttoned to the neck, black pants with lines of yellow stretching from the ankle to the hip of each leg. His _ date outfit, _even if he won't admit it to anyone other than Natasha and her unyielding gaze. Bucky stares, wide-eyed, looking very much like he's grasping for straws, searching for a jibe, a friendly insult. A smile, honey-sweet and growing just as slow, finds its way across his face. "Gorgeous." Bucky settles on. Awkward laughter. "If I knew you were going to be so gorgeous, I would have tried harder."

He starts at the words, infinitesimally. "I'll be honest with you, I'm a bit surprised you washed your hair."

The 1940's never did leave Bucky, and he is every bit the gentleman pulling out the chair for Sam to take a seat. "It's a nice restaurant," he answers, with a gentle roll of his eyes, reclaiming the chair opposite Sam. 

"And expensive." A grimace, hard and only slightly joking. 

Bucky just nods, glances at the door over Sam's shoulder and clocks the newest group of people entering, people leaving.

Not a date, a date, not a date; running through his head like a bitter reminder. And, yet, Sam doesn't care. 

He hovers his fingers over Bucky's left hand, gloved and resting on the table, presses the tips to cloth— delicate, a butterfly setting down at the edge of a petal— and almost startles at the sheer coldness seeping through the satin. "Buck?" he begins, a whisper, soft enough to be carried away away on a wind. "You're okay."

A shake of his head brings him back to himself. His lips crack apart and he is all teeth and awkward, anxious laughter, shrugging away the moment like an old skin. "I know, I know," he says, reassuring and the shine in his eyes slowly returns as they map out the shape of Sam's face. Gently, he takes ahold of Sam's hand in his and squeezes. "Look. I don't want to ruin this dinner. How many times does someone turn forty-two, hm? Let's just enjoy the night."

"I don't think I like being older than you," Sam says on the tail of a hushed chuckle. Absently, he nibbles at the inside of his lip, pulling the skin between his teeth and letting go with an inaudible pop. "Bucky… You know that…. You know that I'll enjoy it, anyway, if I'm with you." 

He knows it's the right thing to say the moment that he says it. A weight rises gracefully from his shoulders; the weight he has carried like lead in the pit of his stomach vanishes. 

Bucky appraises him. And, oh God, where is the Captain America mask when he really needs it? 

Bucky's face does something nameless. He scrunches his nose, and a smirk that tries to be a smile that tries to be a grin eats up his whole face just to settle on his lips. Opening his mouth, closing it again, he doesn't say anything. Speechless. Bucky Barnes speechless. Sam deserves a prize. A trophy, even a medal will do. 

That hand, still around Sam's own, squeezes again. This is the prize, he realizes. This closeness, it's better than a dingy trophy. "You really mean that, don't you?" It sounds like a question, but it isn't one. Realisation dawns behind Bucky's eyes, steel-grey and flickering between greys and blues under the intimacy of the dim light. 

Sam nods, at a loss for words. He is hardly ever at a loss for words; maybe Bucky deserves a prize, too. 

"Samuel middle name unknown Wilson—"

He snorts a laugh at that. In the middle of what could possibly be a grand proclamation of love, the one he has been waiting for so long, and he _ snorts _. He could kick himself, again. 

"I'm not done," Bucky scolds, joy and humour teasing at the corner of his mouth and dancing on his tongue until his words sing in lilting song. "Samuel middle name unknown Wilson, I can't stop thinking about your smile and that way you have of looking at me like I hung the moon in the goddamn sky, I think you're the most perfect man I've ever met and I want to know—" 

"Bucky—" 

"At the risk of ending this friendship, I want to know: what are we?" 

"What do you mean, what are we? Don't do this, Buck, not on my birthday."

"Or is tonight the perfect night? Let's start over… please…" He breathes in deeply and quirks an eyebrow. A smile curls his lips into something pleasant, something that makes Sam want to forget about dinner and kiss him and kiss him and kiss him. Ya Allah. "Sam, you look absolutely gorgeous, you put everyone else in this room to shame."

"Bucky," he says, hiding a grin behind his glass, "You're beautiful. I can't take my eyes off of you." And he means it, and there's that smile again, that feeling again. 

The waitress stands to take their orders and Sam squirms in his seat. Impatient for her to leave, for Bucky's eyes and attention to return to him. 

When she leaves, Bucky raises his half-empty glass to Sam's full one. Their glasses tinkle together, create a sweet and quiet song. 

Sam locks Bucky's gaze in his, steady and certain. Giddiness and disbelief and immense, incredible love bubble dangerously in his stomach where that feeling of lead had been. Newness dances on the air between them, it buzzes at the arch of his brow and at the bow of his lips and at the soft skin of his fingertips tracing circles into Bucky's hand. 

"So…" Bucky begins, eyes intense in the low light. "A toast, to new beginnings and old annoyances."

"To new beginnings." He swallows a burst of laughter, threatening to erupt like the bottle of champagne at the table beside them. "And old annoyances."

"Happy birthday, Sam," Bucky says, voice low, bursting with something nearer to happiness than Sam has heard in a long time. 

"The night's young. We might still have an alien invasion or two before it's over." However the night ends, it would be one of the best. Of that, Sam is sure. 

**————————**

**v. 24 August 2012, ** ** _11.20 a.m_ **

_ and He found you lost and guided you. — 93:7 _

"The time is… 11.21 am. It is a Wednesday morning, the twenty-fourth of August. Is that correct, Mr Wilson?" Dr Reichz checked, nudging the recorder forward with the tip of a finger. 

"How many times do I have to tell you to call me Sam before you actually call me Sam?" He laughed, too dry to pass for anything real and all he could manage. He tried for confidence; his voice sounded as shaken as he felt inside, his stomach clawing its way to his throat and his throat drawing a path straight to the heels of his feet. 

A smile quirked at the corner of the doctor's mouth. "Is that correct, Sam?" 

The ticking of the clock seemed louder as the seconds passed, a freight train running through his mind over and over and over again and in the same ploughing lines. Beads of sweat dotted his brow, clung to his skin and his hair. Sam swallowed. "That's correct."

Dr Reich nodded, satisfied. She took him in and Sam felt she knew him better than he knew himself; like she had glimpsed inside his mind and settled a claim there. She probably did. "Are you sure you're ready for today's session? You don't have to do this if you aren't. You can step away and rethink where you're at in this moment if you need to. You have more than one choice, Sam."

He had been ready at the last session. 

That morning, nervous and drinking down a mug of bitter, scalding coffee after absently chewing around a slice of plain toast he hadn't even tasted, his eyes stared holes into the clock and his hands could have gouged out pieces of wood for how tight he was gripping the edge of the kitchen table, he was ready. 

Sam wondered if he could excuse himself. Leave for a suddenly all too urgent appointment and never return to Dr Reichz, her clear eyes, her sterile room. 

"What are you thinking?" she asked, and Sam started. 

"I'm not ready," he said, and he hazarded another laugh. "But I won't ever be ready, not today, not tomorrow, not if I live for a hundred and fifty years… But…" A silence fell that he couldn't break. And his fingers, his fingers that he had twined around each other and forced in his lap, picked at the loose threads decorating the knees of his jeans. Sam exhaled: "I think I _ need _ to do this. Everybody keeps reminding me that it's supposed to be three days. You know that, doc, three days of such… _ heartfelt _ … _ drowning _ … grieving? It's been months and every time I raise my hands to pray for Ri- to pray for _ him _ I cry wondering if my grief is keeping him tied to this world, like my aunties say it does. I say 'Allah forgive his sins, grant him peace and allow his soul to rest' but what if the thing not allowing for his peace, for his rest, is _ me _."

"Samuel-" Dr Reichz leaned forward and, behind the mask of professional non-presence that was her face, a crack of concern slipped into her voice.

He shook his head quickly, before either of them could talk him out of the room and away from the session. "I _ need _to do this."

There was that silence again; an old woman wringing out clothes over an ancient basin, her arthritic hands moving slower and her ancient eyes seeing clearer blurs with each passing second. 

Sam hated those silences. They sat too heavy on his chest, squirmed him in his seat for the noise of it.

_ You have these choices, Sam. _It was a slap. He stung from it, and he ignored that he did. 

A moment passed, and Dr Reichz nodded. "Okay," she said. Her hand poised over an ever-present notepad. She settled a wizened gaze over Sam, rigid in the high-backed chair, and continued in that slow-steady-low voice Sam had begun to singularly associate with psychiatrists. "Please, close your eyes and make yourself as comfortable as possible. Relax your shoulders. Take deep breaths, Sam."

Sterile air, attempted to be masked by floral scents and faded potpourri filled his nose, his lungs, with each breath he took. 

"I want you to envision yourself in a safe space. Any safe space. There are no rules as to how it should look: this is a space of your own making, you are in control." 

With his eyes closed, Dr Reichz's voice swelled into something larger than the room itself. Sam focused each of the breaths he took. He thought up an open field, grass and yellow flowers swaying in the wind for as far as the eye could see. The glimpse of mountain peaks on the horizon. 

Freedom. Absolute freedom. He would rather be there than in that room. His hands tightened into fists, firm around each other; he would rather have been anywhere than in that room. 

"Remember, Sam, you are safe. The next part won't be so easy, but you are safe," Dr Reichz said. A moment passed. "I want you to think of Riley," she continued, slower than before. "I want you to think of the most painful memory you have of him. Envision it as clearly as you possibly can. What do you see?"

His words caught in his throat. Any breath he had in his lungs stole away into the air pressing down on him, suffocating him. Sam swallowed, his voice not coming out when he wanted it to. 

"What do you see?"

Only what he had seen every day for the last six months. "I see… I see _ him _ smiling, happy to be flying, because he was always so goddamn happy to be flying. And— And— And I see him falling. Falling. He's looking at me… Scared. I can see it in his eyes. He _ knows. _"

Falling, far too quick to be caught and crashing before Sam could save him. 

One more second. That was how long he needed. One more second, and Sam would have grabbed him before he touched the ground.

They would have laughed over it, after crying over it. They would have laughed so hard over it. "Don't ever do that to me again," Sam would have said, around his third cup of sharp coffee. 

"Trust me, I don't plan on it," Riley would have answered, on his second third fourth glass of strong whiskey and already tipsy, shaken but grinning nonetheless. They would have stolen a kiss, then another kiss, then another kiss, until he could taste Riley on his lips even when they had to separate for the night. 

One more second. All he had needed was one more second. 

He crushed his fingers between his palms. He heard the crack, the pop; he saw a mangled set of wings. 

"I want you to take that memory, Sam, I want you to look at Riley, to _ really _ look at him and pause," Dr Reichz said, cutting into the pain shrieking through him as the memory unfolded. "Everything is still. You are looking at Riley, he is looking at you. Tell him everything you wish you could have told him then, everything you wish you could tell him now. Can you do that for me, Sam?"

Sam shook his head. He couldn't do it. And then he nodded. Because he had to. _ I'll always love you, Riles. I'll never forget you, not even when I'm old and grey and hunched from age, not even when I can't remember what shoe goes on what foot. I'll always love you. _ ** _Always. _ ** A heaviness sat on his chest, but he had never breathed more clearly. _ Goodbye _, he thought. Maybe he whispered it, too. It was time. 

_ I love you, too, _ Riley said back, his smile creasing the corners of his eyes. _ Goodbye. _

"Now, take that memory and place it in a bubble. A clear bubble. You are not getting rid of the memory, you will live with it for the rest of your life. Look at that memory in its bubble, and return, slowly, to your safe place." Papers shuffled on Dr Reichz's desk, the ticking of the clock came back to Sam in crawling moments. "You are safe, Sam. When you are ready, open your eyes again."

He sat himself down in his open field. He sighed. 

Reality beckoned for him, and his eyes began to inch open of their own accord. They were crusted, as if he were waking from a heavy sleep. The brightness of the room, artificial, white on white on white on white, were an attack to his eyes, sensitive from how long they had lay closed. 

He looked at the clock hanging over the doorway and started at the time. An hour had passed, speeding past him like mere minutes. 

Silently, Dr Reichz slid a box of tissues across the table. 

Sam raised an eyebrow. Dr Reichz raised one in turn.

He touched a hand to his face and was surprised to find hot tears trailing from his eyes to his cheek, drying on his skin and the collar of his shirt. 

** ————————**

**2024**

_ Love, for you, is larger than the usual romantic love. It's like a religion. It's terrifying. — Richard Siken _

Bucky places a hand to the small of his back, steadies him. He laughs and it washes over Sam's skin. 

The circle of his arms is warm, is always so warm. "Something funny?" Sam asks, voice hushed. 

They kiss and it's gentle. They kiss and Sam feels blessed; they touch and Sam feels holy. 

_ Paradise, _ he thinks _ . _Heaven embraces him in the form of James Buchanan Barnes. He kisses Bucky and he is kissing Jannah in its beauty; he breathes him in and he is breathing in the scent of Jannah in its glory. 

Bucky shakes his head. Voice held barely above a whisper, he says, "I'm in a state of disbelief."

Sam kisses him again. "Don't be." A pause. And he kisses him again. And he kisses him again. 

**————————**

**vi. 29 September 2012, 11.20 a.m**

_ indeed, with every hardship there is ease. — 94:6 _

"Morning, Riley," he said, a soft smile at the corners of his mouth. 

Fresh flowers decorated the headstone and Sam placed his beside them. They were lilies, beautiful and fragile and Riley's favourite. 

Dr Reichz would wait, but Sam hated to do that to her. 

Stuffing his hands into his coat pockets, he nodded once at Riley's grave. Hesitantly walking away, he made a silent promise to see him again, soon. 

**————————**

**2024**

_ The future spirals in a messy tangled / rush until / even in the present I am living in the past, / already missing the people / we are in this moment. / I kiss you / and your ghost. — Nathaniel Orion G. K. _

The roof is unsteady under his feet. Crumbling, from years of age and disuse, from disrepair. 

Sam runs and bolts off the edge, catches himself in the current of a gentle breeze. His wings flap, once, twice, three times, and it's amazing how much the sensation feels like home. 

A loud yell sounds out from the plaza below, milling with civilians idling away their lunch hours. A shrouded figure pushes through the frenzy and aggressively nudges apart a group of angry teenagers in their attempt to escape. 

It's easy, swooping down and tackling the guy to the ground. "Sorry 'bout that, dirtbag," he says, grabbing back the handbags the man had ripped from a pair of elderly women and locking his hands firmly behind his back, "but _ nothing _ bad happens as long as I'm around."

"It's just some bags, what's the big deal?" The man, twenty-two if Sam has to guess, writhes uncomfortably under Sam's gaze. 

Sam scoffs. He echoes, dryly, "What's the big deal?" 

"Look, I can give it back. It was just a stupid dare, okay, like I said: _ no big deal _."

"It must be pretty and privileged where you're coming from, kid." He almost leaves it at that. The man, Michael, as an ID reveals, scowls and stares sullenly at the large building across the road and Sam wants to shake the sense of the world into him. "You don't get to play games like that, not with people's lives, not with their belongings," he settles for. Maybe it's the shield resting against his leg, or maybe it's the Captain America sternness that slips into his voice, but Michael quavers. He looks like he's listening. Sam ends, "You're going to serve your time or pay your fine and then you're going to straighten out. Nothing bad happens while I'm around, kid, not in my America."

The police take longer than they should to arrive. Of course they do. When they get there Sam receives hardly a nod, a thanks more grunt than show of gratitude before they're bundling the man into the back of a car, driving off to the precinct or whatever deserted street corner they'll decide is good enough to drop and leave him. 

_ Oh, America. _Sam sighs. Fighting away the tiredness that tries to inch ite possessive claws under his adrenaline— under his euphoria at a job well done— he reaches to shoulder his shield. 

Bucky would be home by now; Sam smiles at the thought of getting home to him. 

Two more laps around the city, he reasons. Afterwards a quick meeting with the Avengers and a check for any world-ending crises, then— Then a night in; homemade dinner and fulfilling a sleepily made promise to get caught up on the best movies of the past seventy years, which had turned into the past fifty years, and finally, both laughing into their phones at the absurdity of the time and of the quest, decided on a narrower thirty years.

As long he can be next to Bucky as he watches _ The Prince of Egypt _for the first time, Sam is content. He gives his head a minute shake. As long as he can be next to Bucky, he is content. That's the end of it all. 

He indulges in his happiness— in the smile he can never seem to shake— at the precious something that's him and Bucky. New. A flowering plant, a freshly opening bud. 

"Hey, Mr Captain America, sir," a small voice calls. A smaller hand tugs at the back of his pants and stops him from taking off. Dark brown eyes under glasses that take up most of her face greet him, a crooked smile mirrors Sam's own. "Mr Captain America, sir. I'm Ibtisam."

"Nice to meet you, Ibtisam," Sam grins and says. He lowers himself onto one knee and meets her bright, rapidly blinking eyes. "You, kiddo. You can just call me Cap."

"That's disrespectful, sir." Ibtisam gasps, her hand still clutched firmly in his uniform pants. She narrows her eyes up at Sam, as if questioning whether the invitation was a trap, a deception, or genuine. After a moment, she pushes forward and asks, "Can you sign my book… _ Cap _… sir? No one will believe I met you, and all my cousins'll call me a liar, too."

He glanced around the plaza, at people's lives returning to normal. "Sure." And he signs his name in a flourish across the first page of a worn Captain America comic. Ibtisam's smile grows wider as each second passed. Staring at the signature, she scrunches her nose and shifts the glasses up her face and doesn't tuck away the stray strands of curling hair escaping from her headscarf to scratch across her face. "Where's your mom?" he asks, after another moment, concern starting to niggle as the minutes went by and the child seemed to be only more alone. 

As Ibtisam began to answer, a short woman burst from the supermarket right beside them. Her arms are filled with overflowing paper bags; her dark eyes under her niqaab, frantic. 

"There she is." Ibtisam waves at the frenzied women; Sam notices the tension, the flash of anger in her eyes, the relieved exhale. 

"I told you to wait with the security. Please," she strains, "you can't keep running off like this." 

"It's _ him _, Ma," Ibtisam hisses, losing her hand from Sam's uniform to tug at her mother's abaya, "Captain America."

"As-salam," standing tall, he smiles and greets. "She's a great kid, really wonderful. I have a feeling she takes after her mother," he adds, knowing what that praise would mean to both mother and child. 

Her mother laughs, a pleased huff of breath more than anything else. "You know my aunties call you the 'Better Captain America,'" she allows, dropping her voice to an exaggerated whisper and flicking a finger lightly against his shoulder, "I didn't believe them until now. Will you help me with my bags? I live around the corner, but I can't balance groceries and Ibtisam at the same time."

He could fly just one lap around the city instead of two, or shorten the Avengers meeting, postponing it until the next day didn't seem like such a bad thought either.

The world isn't entirely defenseless, it can do without his attention for twenty more minutes. 

Sam nods. "Of course," he says, and takes ahold of whatever he can before falling into step beside the mother and child. 

Maymunah, she introduces herself as. And before long, she has him struggling to keep ahold of the bags for much he's laughing. She wants to be a comedian but she's scared of crowds; she has been writing her comedic novel for three years. Her wife is an editor and she's helping her write it; every night she makes two cups of tea, they sit in the same room and Maymunah writes while her wife reads. 

She mentions her wife so times and the love she holds inside her spills out into the world. It pools, golden and warm, in the depths of Sam's chest. It finds a home beside his love for Bucky, it tickles at his chest and the back of his eyes. 

Twenty minutes turn into hours. They talk. Love and warmth fill him, but so does distant dread.

*******

Bucky chose the sweater because it reminded him of Autumn. 

That first morning, a tattoo upon his memory. The bathroom door stood ajar and Sam could hear the rush of the shower, the reedy whistle of the latest song stuck in Bucky's head, the "Fuck" as bottles of shampoo and body wash fell. 

Sam flipped idly through loudly patterned shirts nestled amidst sleek black turtlenecks nestled amidst bright impulse buys. The orange sweater, turtleneck and cut to hug a figure, hid behind it all. 

He had never seen Bucky wear the sweater, but it smelled like him. And he slipped into it before he could think too much about that, took it home and kept it as part of his own wardrobe. 

He wears it now. It's a gentle touch against the richness of his skin, he knows; brings out the flecks of light brown in his dark eyes. 

That morning, the first of many, plays in his mind; Bucky making pancakes, laughing at the wry smile twisting Sam's lips as he leaned against the doorframe and voiced his surprised approval. 

He thinks of Ibtisam, of her mother who spoke and spoke and spoke as if she had found in Sam a kindred spirit; of her life and her great love, the great beauty and greater tenderness of it all hits Sam stronger than should be possible. 

Something he has no name for, a painfully familiar something that finds him more foe than friend, twists in the pit of his stomach. Yearning and wanting and cold fear and harsh sickness, he thinks, pushing a piece of lettuce across his plate and feeling the sinking of lead, of bitter coal, in the pit of his stomach. 

A throat clears, in the background and on the fringes of his fraying anxieties. "Are you okay, you seem a little far away?" Bucky cuts into his thoughts, his voice distant and fighting to be heard over the noise of Sam's thoughts. 

He swallows his bite of the macaroni salad they had decided to share while waiting for Bucky's surprise meal to finish preparing. 

Thick aroma, almost tangible, dance through the room and pique at Sam's hunger. He goes for another forkful of pasta, only to be met by air. Finished, and he hadn't even tasted it; was neither filled nor satisfied. 

"I don't know," he says, finally. 

Bucky says nothing. 

That is one of the things Sam appreciates about Bucky— possibly, one of the things Sam loved about Bucky— his ability to gage the situation, his ability to know when Sam needs a dozen questions directed his way and when he needs a little quiet, the ghost of fingertips against the back of his hand, the delicacy of an ankle pressed to his ankle. 

A small piece of cheese sits at the edge of Bucky's plate. Sam snatches it, pops it in his mouth with an off smile. 

Bucky doesn't wrestle him for it, doesn't tickle at his ribs until they're both dying from laughter and laying in a tangled heap on the floor. That's how Sam knows he looks more distraught than he feels. 

"I met the sweetest little girl today," Sam begins. "Her ma was really nice too… She's been married for thirteen years, can you believe? Thirteen years, and she says they're still as in love as the day they got married."

Silent, Bucky traces imaginary lines into the back of Sam's hand. 

He settles a heavy gaze, all too familiar and all too knowing as it takes in the wrinkles that have undoubtedly etched their way into Sam's forehead, the worried frown niggling at the corners of his mouth since the morning, and suddenly Sam realizes what had been bothering him. 

"Sometimes you look at me like you love me," Sam blurts, unthinking. He wants to take the words back as soon he says them. 

"Because I might just love you." Cautious. And fear and sadness seem to live in his eyes, but right now they have vacated the house of his gaze. He looks like he wants to say the words over and over and over again, like he wants the two of them to survive on those words, and _ only _ those words. 

Sam sings with it. Its wings carry him on a current even as it makes him sick to his core. 

"I don't think I could do that," he whispers. "After Steve… I don't think I could do that. You don't know how many times he told me he loved me, Buck— I know you're not him and I know by the end he wasn't the same man anymore… I— You know how I feel… But I can't do that again, not yet."

Wistfulness leaks into Bucky's eyes. He squeezes Sam's hand, clasps it gently between his own. "I care about you, Sam, don't ever question that. I'm not going to leave." He cracks a weak grin. "You know, unless you want me to."

_ I love you, _ sits so heavily between them. 

He ignores it. He silently revels in it. 

**————————**

**vii. 13 November 2012, 15.39**

_ and your Lord is going to give to you, and you will be satisfied. — 93:5 _

Dr Reichz told a joke and, for once, Sam burst out laughing. "Thank you," he wanted to say, but he didn't. 

"I'm holding a jumuah lunch at my place this week. All my family's coming," he said instead, and he hoped she could hear it nonetheless.

"Good. That's great. Are you cooking?" 

"Yeah. Kinda a death sentence, inviting them over and not having a home-cooked meal." He laughed again. He picked at the threads in the arm of the chair, as he tried to find a way to approach the next big topic. The best through, he thought, and sighed. "I, uh, I went to the VA a few days ago." 

Dr Reichz sat straighter in her chair. Resting her elbows on the table, she leaned forward. "And?" 

"I stood outside for an hour. I couldn't go in." An embarrassed flush climbed up his neck. He cleared his throat. 

"Next time?" 

Sam nodded. "Yeah, next time. Definitely"

**————————**

**2025**

_ First, when I was apart from you, / this world did not exist, / nor any other. / Second, / whatever I was looking for / was always you. — Rumi _

Light falls through the open window. Street lamps and pale moonlight tangle together to dance across the walls of the bedroom, to dust along the floor and lay its fingers along the stretch of Bucky's skin. 

Sam glimpses at him out of the corner of a half-closed eye. Cool fingers draw idle patterns into his side, nonsense swirls and words Sam can't make out, into letters that feel suspiciously like an _ I _ looping lazily into an _ l-o-v-e _ gliding into a _ y-o-u _that slips itself into the lining of Sam, into the very cracks of him. 

It runs away before he can catch and hold on to it, the feebleness of the words now etched into his skin now melting into nothing once again. 

"Let's say you get a tattoo," Bucky breaks the quiet, "What would you get?" 

He presses further into Bucky's hold. Are they waking up or going to sleep? The hours have passed too fast and too slow and time sits oddly on his bones, he can't make sense of any of it; he doesn't care. 

"I wouldn't," Sam says, huffing a laugh. 

"Wouldn't what, get a tattoo?" Bucky crooks his head down and raises a questioning eyebrow. "Why?" 

Sam feels each movement along his back, that's how close they are. He crooks his own head up and meets Bucky's gaze. "I'm Muslim," he says, carefully, as if Bucky might have a hard time understanding. 

"Huh…" Bucky breathes. And, slowly, he smiles. "Oh, yeah, no tattoos. Sometimes, I forget." 

"Understandable."

Warm breath ghosts over the round of his shoulder as Bucky exhales a low laugh. "I didn't know you were Muslim when I first met you. Makes it seem like we were meant to be."

"Hmm? I thought you were a super spy," he presses, in a whisper. Light touches his skin, it looks like he's glowing; feels it, too. 

"I was an assassin. _ Huge _ difference" he says, light as saying _ I was an accountant; I was a teacher; I was a teenager, _a chuckle in his voice. "Did you know I was Jewish? Not a lot about that in the exhibits they put up about me… Wonder why…"

Gently, Sam nudges his bare stomach. "Yeah, of course I knew."

"How'd you know?" mild incredulousness and laughter play in his voice as he asks. 

"I'm Captain America. I know everything." Sam shrugs and suppresses a chuckle. "Like, how you ate so much of your grandma's latkes at your cousin's bar mitzvah when you were ten. You threw up all over your new shoes and Steve had to call your aunt to clean you up because you were crying, and wouldn't let Steve clean it up for you. You know, stuff like that."

"Oh no… How much did he _ tell you _, exactly?"

"I have years of blackmail, Soldier. I'd be a little worried if I were you."

Did Bucky always laugh this much— golden laughter pooling in his gut, in his throat, and spilling over until it covers everything and fills the room to its very corners? So loud, so full. Does he always laugh like this— so much like the rasping of Autumn leaves, so much like the warmth of a Spring afternoon? 

Sam doesn't think so. Rivers of pleasure, of utmost love, gush through him. 

"Okay, hypothetically, right?" Bucky nudges Sam's shoulder with the tip of his nose. "If you got a tattoo what would it be?" 

Under his breath, he hums. "Hypothetically?" 

He presses his tongue to the gap between his teeth, thinks. His parent's names seem to simplistic, too arbitrary, and there are, as yet, no children and no birthdays to be celebrated and proudly worn. Riley? But that feels too much like holding onto an abandoned anchor. Steve? Anyway unwanted, that feels too much like remnants of forgotten desperation. 

Distractedly— _ distractingly _— Bucky goes back to drawing lazy patterns along Sam's thigh. Wearing a mock frown and hissing about him being annoying, Sam waves Bucky away. He gives him a muted smile, drags his fingers along Sam's arm and tangles their fingers together. 

An unbidden smile blossoms on Sam's lips. He tilts his head up for a kiss. 

"Here," Sam says, after a moment. He points to the inside of his wrist, to his pulse where Bucky rests his fingers. A burning inches up his neck, colours the tips of his ears and the line of his jaw. "'Indeed, with every hardship there is ease.' It's from _ Al-Sharh _ ," he pauses, a quirk in his lips. " _ Comfort, _" he whispers. 

"That's beautiful." And his hands, always moving, trace the words over Sam's veins. "What else?" 

"Just that. Or, maybe." Their hands are wound tight together, and he pulls to rest them both over his chest. "Somewhere here. 'By the glorious morning light, and by the night when it darkens, your Lord has not forsaken you, nor is He displeased with you.'"

"Where's that from?" 

"_ Al-Duha _. It's… It's…" Sam sighs. "It's one of my favourites."

Bucky kisses his shoulder, places kisses in a series of brand new constellations to the sky of his body. "You're something special, Sam Wilson," he says, intimate in the not-near dusk. "You're like no one I've ever met before, and I'm so happy to have you in my life. So lucky."

A lump lodges itself firmly in his throat. He swallows it away. 

When They said "Paradise will be brought near to the righteous, not far" is this what Allah meant? The beauty of this man's company, the peace of it, the love of him?

He feels, with every kiss, that this is what They should have meant. 

The _ I love you I love you I love you so so much _ sits heavy in the room. He breathes it in, a ship-wrecked man begging for water, and he drinks it in, but he refuses to say it. He thinks about Steve, and he tries hard not to think too much about Steve, about the last time he sank into that _ I love you I love you I love you so so so much _and he swallows it down with tears threatening the corners of his eyes. 

"What about you?" he asks, instead. "What would you get?" 

Bucky doesn't take even a moment to think about it. "A pterodactyl— a _ screeching _pterodactyl— flying away from a giant explosion."

"Bucky, I'm serious."

His mouth pulls into something almost a firm line. "So am I."

"Seriously?" 

"Seriously." Tapping lightly over Sam's heart, Bucky allows a moment to pass. He punctuates the end with a quiet exhale and says, "Right here, my name. And here." He points to a place under one of Sam's pecs. "The pterodactyl. Not the explosion, I was joking about that."

"Why?" 

Voice low, just for Sam and his ears, he says, "I've had this body for more than seventy years and I didn't even _really_ _have_ it for most of that time. But, it's mine now, and I want to do something kinda dumb, something stupid and just for me."

Sam nods, he pulls their hands up to his mouth and pulls Bucky in with a delicate kiss. "And for me."

That _ I love you I love you I love you so so so so much _beats rapidly in his chest, Bucky stares, silent, then takes Sam in for a long kiss, a longer and longer one, and he can feel it sparking violently. 

"Sam… " Bucky pulls away, whispers, their lips brushing like butterfly wings together. "I love you. You know that, right? I love you."

He shakes his head, no. He ducks his head as he says, the words erupting as if waiting for days and months and weeks for the perfects moment, "I know, Bucky, I know. I love you, too, I love you so much."

"I know," Bucky whispers. "Because you look at me like you love me." 

He snakes his arms around Sam's waist and holds him close, keeps Sam pressed to his front as if he were the only source of warmth in the whole room. 

It is delicate, the moment. He has never been loved so delicately; he can't remember being loved so tenderly. 

_ Paradise. _He could spend eternity here. 

"What's the time?" He asks, dragging himself back to reality. His phone battery died hours ago, and he pokes his head around Bucky to try and peek at his. 

"Almost three twenty-five," Bucky answers, on the tail-end of a leisurely buried yawn. 

Blankets and sheets twist around Sam's legs, tangle like vines and battle with him to stay in bed. Stay in bed and rest and make a home between Bucky's arms, under Bucky's slowly softening gaze, inside his love-filled words. 

"Shaytan," he whispers harshly under his breath, forcing himself into the early morning cold. 

"Hm? Sam… If I've done something…?" 

"No. No." Despite himself, he manages a reassuring chuckle, a wave of his hands. Because Bucky did do something, and it is pulsing its way through him and begging to be spoken again and again and again into the world. "It's not you, or us, or this. I have to make ghusl and get ready for Fajr." 

Nodding, Bucky murmurs, "I forget sometimes."

"One day I'll teach you everything." It sounds like a promise. He doesn't mind. 

Bucky sits up in the bed. He hasn't slept, and he looks exhausted and in deep need of it, but he's beaming. "I'll be here when you get back." Another promise. 

When he walks back to the room, minutes later, he finds the side of the bed Bucky had wordlessly claimed has his own empty. Still warm to the touch. 

Through the open bedroom door Sam hears a lowly whistled song, the sound of mugs tapping delicately against each other, the kettle being put on to boil. 

He changes into loose sweats, into another one of Bucky's shirt he borrowed and never returned.

To himself, he grins. He presses his forehead to the ground, he prays, he feels the _ I love you I love you I love you so much _ bursting through him and he directs a million _ thank you _s Allah's way.

**————————**

**viii. **

_ If Allah knows [any] good in your hearts, He will give you [something] better than what was taken from you, and He will forgive you; and Allah is Forgiving and Merciful. _

**————————**

**2025**

_ What is the body? That shadow of a shadow / of your love, that somehow contains / the entire universe. — Rumi _

Chaos. Sam struggles over a large box, and tugging at tape with his teeth, can't find a better word for the mess of boxes and clothes that surround him. 

The front door clicks shut and Sam shakes his head, chuckles. "How do you have so much stuff?" he calls. 

A box held under each arm, Bucky stops outside the bedroom door. _ Their _ bedroom door. "I was just asking myself the same question." He shrugs. "Most of my clothes were already here, most of my books and things too. Maybe I have a shopping problem. You watch _ Shopaholic? _I could be Amy Adams."

Sam takes out a handful of books from a badly beaten box, and slips them easily into the shelf amongst his own. "Letting you watch movies was a mistake!" he groans, exaggeratedly. "I don't think it's a _ shopping problem _, and it's not like we don't have the space for all your things. Don't sweat it."

Quiet, responding with no more than a rough huff of breath, Bucky drops to unpack cushions and blankets from one of the boxes he just brought it.

He spent nearly every night at Sam's apartment. It was already theirs before Sam said, "Move in with me. I'm tired of waiting for the perfect moment. Anything can happen at any time. I love you. Start a life with me." 

Sam doesn't even know where half these things came from. Trinkets from tiny villages he might never visit and cushion covers with shakily stitched borders and perfumes mixed by hand; how could Sam mind these pieces of Bucky finding a place in his home. 

Thick strands of dark brown hair, shiny and sweetly curling, escape from his hairband to curtain half his face. Behind it, Sam catches the barest glimpse of a smile. 

Bucky looks up then, as if sensing Sam's gaze as it lands on him. "'We,'" Bucky says, unprompted. "_ We, us, ours. _I like the sound of it, Sam. A lot."

"Yeah." Sam swallows. He reaches across the small gap between them and his grin grows wider as the space between them closes, feels sun dance under his skin as his fingertips brush against Bucky's chin, as he tucks those loose strands of hair behind Bucky's ear. "We, us, _ours. _I like the sound of it, too, Buck. I love the sound of it actually. A lot."

  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

>   
beautiful art by [tazatouille](https://tazatouille.tumblr.com//)!


End file.
